The sale of March 3, 1927 indeed included eight drawings and an oil by Picasso, among which nº58 The Meal of 1903 (fig.19) or nº60 The Poor of 1904 (fig.20) which were both reproduced in Picasso’s biography as belonging to Raoul Pellequer’s collection, Level’s nephew and Max’s brother in 1928. We can also point out the drawing nº62 Sweet-dish with Pears, (fig.10) seen previously, and nº63 Head of a Woman. Level’s testimony tells us that he bought these two works at the beginning of the year 1915 before the dealer Léonce Rosenberg left for the front: “With less important means than him [L. Rosenberg], as it is for my personal collection, I bought from Picasso not paintings but a large drawing – a fruit bowl – in China ink and a watercolour from the beginning of the African period, a melancholy head of a woman to which is added a moving expression to really new investigations of lines and planes »[i]. While the China ink cannot be located[ii], the watercolour corresponds to nº137 of Pierre Daix’s catalogue raisonné[iii], Head of a Woman, beginning of 1908 (fig. 21 ) wrongly mixed up by the latter with nº138. To this set is added, Woman Ironing, a pastel illustrated in the sale catalogue, made in 1904 (fig. 22) and which later belonged to Walter P. Chrysler Jr prestigious collection in New York. Apart from these works, three drawings – not illustrated and undated- remain unidentified: Couple I and II and the drawing Mother and Child, respectively nº56, 57 and 61 in the sale.
Other works can be recognized the following year in the publication of Picasso's biography by André Level. The illustrations mention four works still belonging to his collection in 1928: the study Page of an Album, pen and ink drawings of 1905; Couple, China ink of 1924; Head of a Woman, pastel of the series of portraits of Olga created in Fontainebleau during the winter of 1921 or the small pen and ink drawing Study for the Saltimbanques of 1905 ( fig. 23) with the dedicatory: “To my friend André Level, Souvenir of my large painting of 1905”. This work belonged to André Level and then to his heirs before reappearing in a public auction at Sotheby’s on June 3, 2010 in Paris. The French State pre-empted the drawing to include it in the collections of the Picasso Museum in Paris, as well as the watercolour Reclining Nude (fig. 24) of 1906. This small painting, mentioned as “unknown localization” in Daix’s catalogue raisonné, had never been shown and probably remained in the Level family for nearly a century. This last auction highlighted the hitherto unknown works which had been given to André Level by the artist himself and that he kept until his death. After the sale in 1927, Level explained that he kept “an unalienable fund of a youth which was not meant to pass: a dozen works by Picasso, gifts from the most generous of friends »[iv], among which the probable Ingresque portrait of the collector in 1918.
The friendship between the two men went on well after 1928, as shown by Picasso's dedicatory appearing on the works for his friend Level, found thanks to the sale at Sotheby's
until 1942[v]. Acquisitions or gifts, the Level collection kept on growing after 1927. During its recent dispersion, it included the remarkable washdrawing linked to the engravings of the Suite Vollard The Sculptor at Rest of 1933 ( fig. 25) [vi] whose price rocketed to more than 3 700 000 euros. André Level’s book Souvenirs d’un collectionneur was published posthumously in 1959 following Picasso’s impulse and in the care of Max Pellequer. The artist then made an original lithograph on March 5, 1958 ( Fig.2 ) representing an old street organ with a monkey in front of a young Pierrot, in homage to the great composition of the Saltimbanques, which is today in the National Gallery of Art of Washington, which André Level had bought half a century before.
[i] Level, Souvenirs, p. 40.
[ii] The Sweet-dish with Pears, nº62 of the sale of the Level collection in 1927 was not found in the Zervos or Daix-Rosselet catalogues raisonnés.
[iii] Pierre Daix et Joan Rosselet, Le Cubisme de Picasso, Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1979.
[iv] Level, Souvenirs, p.76.
[v] Complete list of the works in the catalogue of the sale Les Picasso d’André Level, Sotheby’s Paris, June 3, 2010.
[vi] lot.4 Sotheby’s sale(June 3, 2010 Paris), not in Zervos
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Summary